Nobel Prize for literature: “an immense honor”, reacts Kazuo Ishiguro

Ⓒ AFP – Ben STANSALL – | Kazuo Ishiguro gives a press conference in London on 5 October 2017 after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the “Remains of the Day”, called Thursday “extraordinary” to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, especially after initially believing in a “hoax” …

“It is extraordinary and totally unexpected for me, and it comes in a time of uncertainty for the world, its values, leadership and security, and I hope that receiving this immense honor will be an encouragement, peace and benevolence, “he told an improvised press conference at his home in London.

He said he was in his office when his agent called him and told him the news. “I thought it was a hoax and I did not believe it for a long time,” he said. “It was when the BBC finally called me that I thought it could be true.”

Kazuo Ishiguro said he would like to collaborate in comic book writing. “I’m discussing working on a graphic novel, which is pretty exciting for me because it’s something new and it sends me back to my Japanese childhood when I was reading mangas.”

Asked about the poet-musician Bob Dylan, who preceded him on the list, he immediately replied: “He’s my hero”!

He said he was “embarrassed” to receive the award, “while so many great authors have not yet been rewarded,” quoting in particular the Japanese Haruki Murakami, the Canadian Margaret Atwood and the British Salman Rushdie.

At 62, Kazuo Ishiguro received the supreme literary distinction for “revealing, in novels of a powerful emotional force, the abyss under our illusory sense of comfort in the world,” commented the perpetual secretary of the Academy Swedish, Sara Danius, under the golds of the stock market in Stockholm.

His most famous novel, “The Vestiges of the Day” (1989), brought to the cinema in 1993 by James Ivory with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, was hailed by the prestigious Man Booker Prize which rewards an English-language work.

Kazuo Ishiguro confirms the overwhelming dominance of English-speaking people in the Nobel Prize for literature, with 29 winners against 14 French-speakers, 13 German-speaking eleven Hispanics and seven Swedish speakers.

Its editor, Faber & Faber, also reacted on Twitter, saying “delighted that Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize.”